Everything you need to know about running and life and any other random crap I find bouncing through my mind like a ping pong ball. And always be sure your shoes are happy.

No. Try not. Do…or do not. There is no try.

All due credit to any triathlete out there. This is a bunch of hard work – not that I doubted that, having watched hubs do every distance from sprint to Full Ironman over the years. I’m doing, to my knowledge, the shortest Tri you can. I think the only way I could do a shorter race is to trick my way into a Kid’s Tri. “Hey, I had a growth spurt! I’m tall for my age!” I won’t do that though, not because I’m an honest sort of person, but because some tiny dudette would go spinning past me on their little training wheels bike sporting a white wicker basket with pink streamers and I would cry. I would get off my bike and throw it on the ground and stomp my feet and cry.

Crazy Becky Heather Killer Hubs cannot seem to quit dropping helpful hints about triathlons. Very helpful hints, too, with the exception that I still can’t figure out if I’m flattered that hubs, while discussing this Crazy Weather and whether it would be a wet suit legal race, offered me his wet suit. Not so much even that he offered it, but that he seemed to think it would fit. Isn’t it in some hubanding manual somewhere that you never indicate that your dainty wife could fit into anything belonging to your manly self??

The learning curve is steepening rapidly. Suddenly what seemed to be an hour or so consisting of doggie paddling in a warm, shallow lake, peddling along a highway and then going for a little jog has turned into Mothra vs. Godzilla, and we all know what happened to Mothra.

(I’m just quoting Wiki. Sentence above she is referred to in is somehow dying.)

I realized this weekend that I didn’t even know the distances of all three events. I thought it was a 5K run, and I know for a branded-in-my-brain fact that the swim is 400 yards but had no idea what the bike was. Ten miles? Eighteen miles? Who knew? And what kind of special stupid do you have to be to register for a race for which you do not actually know the distances?

Me, and one other lady.

I trained for three or four months for my first half marathon. I talked hydration nutrition elimination clothing shoes for months. I bought a Garmin and tracked every single mile like a new religion. Date, time, distance, pace, weather, everything. The day dawned. I’d set everything out the night before, of course, nervously reviewing it all 37 times. Hubs and the twins were going to meet me at the finish line, so I hitched a ride with a friend, a seasoned runner, marathoner and triathlete.

She noticed I seemed a bit nervous – probably the incessant leg jiggling, which I’m actually doing right now, I guess Pavlovian leg jiggling as I remember the story? Can leg jiggling be Pavlovian?

Yes, it’s my first half! I told her, jiggling, head bobbing, jerking slightly and slavering a bit at the corners of my mouth, my water bottle full of bubbles as it shook uncontrollably.

Well, I lived. I did the half and thought I’d conquered the world. Tired, stiff and sore – yes, I did – I wore my race shirt triumphantly to work the next morning and told everyone who couldn’t hide fast enough every excruciating detail, mile after mile. I did not wear the finisher’s medal only because it kept clanking against my desk in a very irritating fashion.

The second day, as even more soreness set in and I was forced to grab the edge of the desk to sit or stand, my friend came into my office.

“You did that half marathon, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yep! It was great I was so excited I did it! It was hard but I did it!” (Why was she asking this? I’d talked about it every day for the past several months.)

She then told me that a lady she bowled with the evening before was limping terribly and could hardly get to the line to bowl. She asked the woman if she was OK. The woman (a smoker who walked a mile or two daily and bowled as her forms of exercise) related this:

She’d registered for “that 5K” over the weekend; she wanted to walk the 3 miles in support of the charity. Except after a while, when she thought she surely should have hit three miles by now, she looked about and realized there was no finish line. In fact, what she saw was a sign that stated Mile 4. Asking around she discovered there was no 5K, only a half and a full marathon. Well, what to do? So she continued on and walked the entire damn half marathon with NO TRAINING. Her feet were covered in blisters and she could hardly move her legs.

And she was my age.

After my brain stopped exploding I asked the woman’s name and immediately looked up the race results. Fortunately she was about the last in our age group, or my running career would have been over right then.

But you gotta admit, the woman did not give up.

And I won’t, either.

Anything you’re looking at that intimidates you? Are you going to try?

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5 thoughts on “No. Try not. Do…or do not. There is no try.”

“Anything you’re looking at that intimidates you? Are you going to try?”
Running the Bob Kerrey Bridge in Omaha in late July. Why? For the simple fact that it scares the pee out of me.

And that whole St. Jude Full Marathon thing in December.
The race doesn’t scare the bodily fluids out of me so much as the 30 weeks of training and every “Part X of my body is going to just fall off!” thought that keeps going through my brain every waking hour.

Other than that, not much. And no, I’m not going to try. I’m going to do.

*I* inspire YOU?!
But YOU inspire ME!
And YOU are responsible for getting me started running to begin with.
It’s like a big ol’ Circle of Inspiration and where one ends the other begins and all that stuff… 😉

I’m officially scared to run the 50K I have on tap for Memorial Day Weekend. I was only excited ’til I ran a full six hours two weeks ago. I was delusional the last four miles. Seriously hallucinating. I guess I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid to my hubby or supporters or start hugging strangers. Use your imagination. I’ll probably never wanna run again. Pfft. Yup. Scared. Pray for me, please.